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Microsoft have increased the GPU speed of the Xbox One, as well as some additions to the console.

Today, on the Major Nelson podcast, Microsoft vice president Marc Whitten spoke about some of the changes and additions they have been making to the Xbox One development kits since the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

“This is the time, and this is the thing I think people are going to see as we get into Gamescom and people get their first look at new things since E3,” said Whitten. “This is the time where developers have the final dev kits in their hands, they’re really working closely with us on how things have come together. There’s some things that have really started to come together quite well.”

“Since E3, an example is that we’ve dropped in what we internally call our mono driver,” Whitten added. “It’s our graphics driver that really is 100 percent optimised for the Xbox One hardware. You start with the base [DirectX] driver, and then you take out all parts that don’t look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really optimises that experience. Almost all of our content partners have really picked it up now, and I think it’s made a really nice improvement.”

“This is the time where we’ve gone from the theory of how the hardware works–what do we think the yield is going to look like, what is the thermal envelope, how do things come together–to really having them in our hands. That’s the time where you start tweaking the knobs. Either your theory was right dead on, or you were a little too conservative, or you were a little too aggressive. It’s actually been really good news for us, and an example of that is we’ve tweaked up the clock speed on our GPU from 800mhz to 853mhz.”

Nintendo has held an annual press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo for the last two decades.

However, during the company’s latest investors meeting, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata indicates that the company will not be hosting “a large-scale presentation” at this years event.

“In the past, we have announced new titles at Investor’s Meetings and then uploaded videos onto the internet, but with new methods like Nintendo Direct, that we have now, we believe that we are able to provide more appropriate and effective information separately to people from different standpoints and interests [gamer, investor, etc],” said Iwata.

“First, we have decided not to hold a large-scale presentation where new news is presented to a general audience from all over the world as in previous years,” he continued. “Instead, we are planning several smaller events for software targeted at the American market. One of these will be a closed event for distributors, and another will be a closed event for the Western press.”

“I did not appear in last year’s E3 presentation, and I do not intend to appear in these events either. Apart from these closed events, during E3, we are deliberating how to deliver game information to those at home using new methods, so we will announce further plans later.”

“During the E3 period, we will utilize our direct communication tools, such as Nintendo Direct, to deliver information to our Japanese audience, including those who are at this financial briefing, mainly focusing on the software that we are going to launch in Japan, and we will take the same approach outside Japan for the overseas fans as well,” Iwata concluded.

After a tremendous response at Electronic Entertainment Expo, Ubisoft significantly ramped up the development of Watch Dogs, a cross generations IP, launching on both current and next generation platforms.

“E3 was a great revelation for Watch Dogs,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told MCV. “It gave us a chance to increase the whole project, giving the studio the chance to have bigger teams to help them achieve this goal they have.”

“You always have great ideas, but you need enough people to bring it to life. After E3, we really made sure they had all the teams they needed and all the capacity they wanted to fulfill their dream,” he continued. “It’s an open world, that is well-adapted to what people want to play today. So there’s good potential for success.”

The Last Guardian will be released “when it is absolutely ready,” insured Sony president of product development Scott Rohde.

Rohde explained that the long-in-development title was not the this years show because Team Ico are focused on building the best experience possible, reports GameSpot.

“I will not give you a detailed update, but I will say one thing. It goes back in my mind to innovation and to gamers and to quality,” Rohde said. “That title is going to ship when it is absolutely ready.”

“And I think that’s a really important thing to remember; that it would be very easy to ship a game when it’s not quite ready because we need to meet a business plan. Gamers are first. And the experience that we provide is first. And that’s why we’re going to talk about that game when we’re ready to talk about it.”

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata describes the online community as a “communication between Miis,” adding that this interaction can happen with simple text message.

Iwata stated that Miiverse will include a feature that depicts games that are currently popular at the time. Developers can also incorporate the Miiverse features in their games, allowing for an expanded community interaction.

Iwata says that Nintendo wants to create “a new degree of empathy between players.” The NES GamePad makes the connections between players and devices richer because the GamePad screen can perform functions independent of the console, Iwata adds.

Iwata concluded with saying that the system can connect players with each other, “regardless of space or time.” Adding that the social elements of Miiverse are also designed to work with future Nintendo devices.